The Issue of Human Cloning

The Issue of Human Cloning The recent news of the successful cloning of an adult sheep-in which the sheep's DNA was inserted into an unfertilized sheep egg to produce a lamb with identical DNA-has generated an outpouring of ethical concerns. These concerns are not about Dolly, the now famous sheep, nor even about the considerable impact cloning may have on the animal breeding industry, but rather about the possibility of cloning humans. For the most …

…questions are about genetic engineering, which is a different issue than cloning. Cloning is a crude method of trait selection: It simply takes a pre-existing, unengineered genetic combination of traits and replicates it. I do not wish to dismiss the ethical concerns people have raised regarding the broad range of assisted reproductive technologies. But we should acknowledge that those concerns will not be resolved by any determination we make regarding the specific acceptability of cloning.